NOBODY ON THIS PLANET IS FREE FROM THE CONDITION OF THE AIR, WATER, TEMPERATURE, TOXINS EVERYWHERE, OR THE LIMITATIONS ON FOOD PRODUCTION.

A civilized culture and a democratic system of self-governance exist to provide certain rights and freedoms:

The U.N. has just passed ...

in mid-2010, a resolution on a Human Right to water. A half century late. This is meant to counteract the privatization of water resources by corporations, for profit, and to announce that death from thirst and pollution is an easily remedied evil that can no longer be tolerated in a civilized world.

Conservatives who argue against

a "world government" and against the U.S. ceding any sovereignty to it, illustrate the breadth and depth of the obsolete mindset they inhabit. Global agreements on basic human rights and the responsibility of nation states to build sustainable economies are essential to achieving a stable global civilization.

When every new crisis is global,

we must at least begin to imagine that some true form of global democracy will have to be part of the solution.

THE RECKONING ...

... will come with rethinking what we mean by freedom. We take many true freedoms for granted, seldom exercise them, hardly notice when they shrink. Freedom from deception in the public media, freedom from corruption in government, freedom from fraud and other crimes in mega-corporations. Free from the "advertising tax" which burdens our minds, our economies and the planet. The reckoning will be in the realization that freedom and democracy required responsibility, participation and homework.

National Security?

We in the U.S. have been told for decades that access to oil is essential to our "national security." Michael Klare predicts ominously in Resource Wars that "national security" in the 21st century will come to be seen more and more in terms of an ever shrinking supply of valuable resources: water, food, minerals, etc. In a cynical but starkly realistic vein, he says we in the "developed" world (with powerful militaries) will be less effected, at least for a while. Paraphrasing Klare in a radio interview, "The early signs are evident. People in the tropics and the global south will, in increasing numbers, starve, fight and die over food, water, medicines and arable land. Or they will ever more desperately try to migrate across borders and away from the shortages. But these resource wars won't impact our neighborhoods, at least for a while. We'll mostly watch them on TV." Because we think we are "free" from these emergencies ... for now.

NOBODY ON THIS PLANET IS FREE TO PASS ON TO THEIR CHILDREN A LIVING ENVIRONMENT IN NO WORSE SHAPE THAN THE ONE IN WHICH THEY WERE BORN.

The most pernicious lie that

the outlaw capitalists foisted on us is the idea that "Freedom" and the "Free Market" are synonymous. The "free market" is neither free nor a true market. Belief in its sacred authority deprives us of freedoms we don't even recognize. The "free market" is centrally controlled corporate socialism for the rich and powerful, and cutthroat survival for a majority of humanity.

"'Democracy' is a huge scam,

foisted on emerging economies, by the World Bank and WTO," argues Arundhati Roy. Global ecology and rights activists like her say that 'Democracy' has become a disguise, masking a juggernaut of corporate oligarchies.

We who live in "developed" economies, with access to this electronic environment, exist in a privileged strata between the super rich and a wide majority who lack many of the rights we take for granted. It is our responsibility to notice the conditions created by those "above" us and imposed on those "below" us, to announce the inherent economic injustice, and to demand a radical reorganization of those conditions.

THE RECKONING ...

... is the shocking realization that global wealth is the flip side of global poverty and the global eco-crisis. As the viability of the living ecosphere slips further into an emergency we will come to the realization, as Native Americans did, that we don't own the earth, it owns us, and we must share in both: its common benefits and its universal stewardship.

A lifestyle of "Plenty" is not a benefit,

nor an expression of freedom when it requires ignorance of the impact of that lifestyle on those who cannot share it.

All freedoms come with responsibilities. Our freedoms cannot include both: access to cheap gasoline AND a stable, sustainable environment, or the indulgence of luxury AND environmental justice. We will have to choose which freedoms matter most.

The freedoms to invest, exploit, deplete, enslave, destroy, advertise materialism, sell waste and war: all include, sadly, the illegitimate power to trample human rights and destroy the environment, and thereby destroy the foundations on which human progress has evolved.

The freedom of the ruling class to express their unconscious fears, needs and lusts, through the abuse of industrial, monetary and political power, is a crime against humanity. A crime of willful ignorance and wanton destruction in the service of myopic egoism.

Don't think there's a ruling class,

here in the U.S. or across the planet? Look around.

The rich and powerful are just as trapped...

in their identities, world views and destiny as we are, in the products of their "enterprise." It's just that they have barricaded themselves from seeing or experiencing the physical suffering. What their spirits suffer, from living their egoist dreams, from denying their guilt and responsibility, only they, maybe, eventually, can know.

We must know it's time to reverse the damage their illusions have wrought.